


superglue

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [25]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Gifts, Interviews, PTSD, Past Child Abuse, School Assignments, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Trauma, Veterans, attempted counseling, i dunno y'all it gave me the sads, possibly failed counseling, self doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 00:20:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16671190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Sam stood his ground. Looked Wade in the eye.“I hear you,” he said, “But I’m not sure I believe you. And that’s fine, man. That’s cool. It’s fucking hard to admit that you love those dumb fuckers when you know with certainty that they’ll die before you."





	superglue

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty/emotional fic for Amanda Howlett, I hope this helps in some way, my dear. 
> 
> Many warnings here: child abuse, PTSD, schizophrenia, and war trauma below. Please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe.

Wade was in line to purchase for some superglue which would not forever ruin his furniture. Dopinder had sworn by this one brand which he’d similarly sworn was sold ‘everywhere in the city.’ Wade resolved to exact retribution for these lies at a later date. It wasn’t in the holiday spirit.

Nor was his goddamned cat, of course, with her steadfast determination to break every ornament, upend every artifact, and eat every bit of tinsel he owned. He was about ready to call her a fucking idiot, but then he realized that if he was a cat, hell yeah he’d smash every shiny motherfucker in sight. Abso-fucking-lutely. Why the hell not?

He wondered how much tinsel cats could eat before poisoning set in.

He surveyed the women in front of him in line with her cart stuffed full of blow-up snowmen and penguins and fucking teddy bear Santa on top of the store’s entire stock of rainbow Christmas lights.

He had time.

He opened google on his phone.

He closed goggle on his phone.

He asked the cashier over his fellow patrons’ heads if they needed help scanning all those motherfucking blow-up dolls, he had somewhere to be.

 

 

The kid knocked on his door just as Bella attempted to demonstrate the veracity of google result no. 1 for ‘pets eat tinsel.’ Wade called for him to come in while wrangling stringy foil delights out from between her little needle teeth. She did not appreciate his intervention in the festivities and whacked at his hands, hissing. He shoved the now-liberated tinsel into the plastic bag with the other strings of it and tied it up tight.

She watched him with her ears flat against her head. Her tail whipping back and forth in righteous fury.

He made sure she could see him as he dumped the bag into the trash.

“Not food,” he told her with a finger.

She hissed at him and batted in his direction from the couch.

“Are you two fighting again?” the kid asked, watching these negotiations from the door. The cat hopped off the back of the couch and strutted, tail still whipping, into the hall. Probably to go puke on Wade’s bed in retaliation.

Wade watched her go with pursed lips, then addressed Peter.

“You gonna eat shit too?” he asked. The kid was eye-searing yellow.

“No?”

Who the fuck looked at that yellow and said, ‘yes, I’ll take ten of them.’

“We had the semi-finals today. Here, I’ll take it off.”

The fact that Academic Decathlon was a thing which actually happened in schools across the nation was an offense to all two of Wade’s sensibilities. He saw no point in the competitive screaming of facts in front of an audience. That was what Jeopardy was for. Although, it was his understanding that schools had even appropriated Jeopardy to administer their evil ways.

“They put Jeopardy on Netflix, did you know?”

And there went his whole fucking evening. _Fuck_.

The kid laughed at him and dug through his bag, then held out a piece of paper. Wade took it without looking at it.

“What’s this? Is it a concert? I ain’t going to no concert. Unless they got a raffle, do they got a raffle?”

It wasn’t a concert, he saw when he finally looked at the paper. It was an assignment. It read—

“We’re supposed to be starting to think about college,” the kid interrupted before he could even get past the first line. “They asked us to talk to our friends and families about their post-high school experience. We’re supposed to do it like an interview, where I ask you questions and write down your responses and then we make a big essay in the end. I already did one with May, but we’re supposed to do four. Would you do it with me?”

Wade’s life flashed before his eyes and got stuck on 18 year-old Wade screaming profanities over his shoulder through a screen door. It had started with jeering and ended with “fine, just fucking die, for all that I care, you motherfucking coward. I’ll be off _doing_ something with my life while you’re rotting in your fucking cell. Don’t call me.”

Hahahahahaha.

Ha.

No.

“Pete, I’m really not the best guy for this. You know who’s amazing at post-high school life? Nelson. You should ask Nelson. Or Stark—actually no, not Stark, he did high school at like, ten. Sam Wilson, there’s your guy. Ask him.”

“I already asked Mr. Nelson but he said he’s already doing one for his niece. I asked Ms. Page too, but MJ already called dibs.”

Goddamnit, Karen.

“Please, Wade? It’s only a few questions. When I did it with May it only took half an hour.”

Please, Wade? It’s only that chunk of years you have tried to bury in blood for as long as I’ve been alive.

“Kid, I really don’t think you know what you’re asking here, bud. You don’t want my name on anything of yours, yeah?”

The kid dropped his gaze and shrugged.

“They don’t actually look at the names,” he said, “But I get it if you don’t want to do it, I can find someone else.”

God, was this karma? Was this Bella’s manifested ire? Bitch, he was going to go out and buy strings of living catnip as stand-in garlands and _this_ was how she repayed him?

“Sit,” he instructed. The kid flopped down on the couch and Wade sighed at the paper before coming around to join him. He didn’t like to have these talks with Peter. As much as he could, he made Red have serious talks with Peter. He was better at it, in some ways. He’d honed his silver tongue in law school and could flick that switch on and off as he pleased.

Wade was a dumb soldier stuck on full power. He didn’t have words, he had guns and knives and cancer. He didn’t have a little neat story all wrapped with a bow. He sure as fuck didn’t have a bow. He had a crossbow, but that was different.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and glanced over the assignment sheet. Pete’s teacher had written out a huge list of questions and instructed her students to pick twelve to fifteen. That was a minute or two for each question. He didn’t have to go in very deep.

He still wasn’t sure he could do it.

“Wade?” the kid prompted, having dug out his notebook.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his head.

“Peter, my life ain’t gonna look pretty no matter how many boxes you put it in,” he said. The kid cocked his head, inquisitively. “I didn’t go to a fancy college, I ain’t got a degree or anything like what your teacher is looking for you to learn about.”

Peter looked down into his lap and chewed his lip a little.

“Mrs. Larson said that the point is to see a whole lot of different paths,” he said. “So I think it’s okay if I have some ‘untraditional’ ones.”

Ugh.

Fuck Mrs. Larson and her well-rounded pedagogy.

Alright, whatever. It wasn’t like he had to do anything drastic.

“Alright, fine. Go on then.”

The kid lit up like the lights Bella had not yet tried to eat. He took back the paper and went through the questions he’d already put a star next to. Wade settled in for an hour of misery and started planning his Jeopardy marathon so that he’d have a light at the end of this fucking tunnel.

And then the torture began.

 

 

“You went to high school in Canada, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that like it is here?”

“Yeah.”

“Except more snow?”

Wade had visceral memories of -16 weather. He needed a blanket. Where was the fucking cat? Thusly provisioned, he settled back in. Bella hunkered down to stab razors into his jeans and he got the distinct feeling it was punishment.

“Yeah, I grew up way north. It’s practically balmy down here.”

Peter considered him.

“Wade, do you ever go home?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that? This is home.”

It had been home for years now. More home than home ever had been.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just. Don’t you miss it sometimes?”

Not even a fucking little. Not when there was the chance that that man’s corpse was still somewhere up there, taking swigs of whatever the fuck he could get his ghostly fucking hands on. Taking swings at whoever the fuck he could get his ghostly fucking hands on. He could have broken that guy’s motherfucking neck if he’d squeezed hard enough. Could have left the same bruises he’d worn to school everyday from ages six to sixteen. Deeper, if he’d wanted.

“No. Next question.”

He didn’t mean to be so curt with the kid, but he couldn’t dwell on that shit for longer than a minute or two before the voices woke up.

“Uh, okay. Sorry, I didn’t—” Peter was having second thoughts. Wade pet the cat and sighed.

“Pete, don’t. Just move on.”

He shut up and nodded. He was a good kid, Pete.

“Okay, uh. What did you think you’d do with your life in high school?”

End his father’s. Get caught. Go to jail.

“Didn’t have any big plans back then,” he said instead, “Wasn’t thinking about college or much of anything really. I was a fucking dumb kid. Wanted to smoke, wanted to drink, wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge. I guess it didn’t occur to me that college might offer all three.”

There was no money for college and Wade had never had the grades. He’d had several disciplinary meetings though, so that was something.

Peter reached over to pet the cat and she leaned into his palm with a little half-purr.

“What did you do then?” he asked.

Wade laughed.

“You know this story, kid. I joined up. Joined the army. Got me a fancy uniform and a duffle bag and off I went. This was around 9/11, so my ass went straight to Afghanistan.”

The kid stopped dead and stared at him with huge eyes.

“I didn’t know you went to Afghanistan,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well. I don’t go out of my way to tell hella people,” Wade said with a shrug.

“Wade, you’re a veteran.”

“I fucking guess. Doesn’t matter, next question.”

Peter was upset about this. He wrote down Wade’s response numbly and then appropriated Wade’s goddamned traitor of a cat to cuddle while he asked the next one.

“How long did you stay in that “career?””

“I did one tour, two years, then got recruited into the special forces—US, not Canadian. So much motherfucking paperwork, you would not believe, kid. Did two more tours there, then decided I’d had enough. Got some fucking problems along the way, had to take some time off.”

“So that was, what, six years total?”

“Yeah, five or six, I can’t really remember. Got put on admin leave for trying to gut an officer, whoopsie. He was a motherfucker, though. Don’t regret it. They tried to cancel my visa, that was exciting.”

Peter hesitated.

“I’m just going to say you did five or six years in the army and rose through the ranks, is that okay?”

Well, it wasn’t _in_ accurate.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Make it pretty for Teach.”

This carried on for longer than Wade liked. Some of the questions were easy. (‘How did you pick your new career?’ Well, I canned a guy and got ten grand for it and thought well, fuck, maybe I can make this work. Write that down as ‘chose to pursue strengths and skills learned in the military.’ ‘Did you ever think about any further education?’ Alright, so there’s this guy we all called Lucky up north and this fucker knew every way to skin a cat. So I went up there to learn me some taxidermy and you would not believe how useful that’s been. Here, write that one down as ‘experimented with traditional Canadian crafts and culture.’)

Some of them were hard.

“Is there anything you’d go back and tell yourself in high school?”

Live out of spite, baby Wilson. Bite the bullet for now, leave the knives alone. Killing yourself won’t make the voices stop and it sure as hell won’t make him. Tell no one, trust no one. Keep your head down and live out of fucking spite.

“I’d say the army ain’t the right place to work out mental illness. Maybe take a gap year, might have put me in a better space before I left.”

Left that swinging screen door and the silence which followed it. Like cutting off a limb at its joint. Couple years and you realize that you never really needed it, it was just a fucking convenience. Conventional. You ain’t like everyone else, Wilson. And that’s alright, fuck them. Fuck all of them.  

“Do you think education is important?”

Depends on your definition of education. Getting kicked around and kicked down and starved for days on fucking end certainly taught him how to swallow a certain kind of rage. Carrying the plaster covered bodies of eight-year-olds, ten-year-olds, sixteen-year-olds in Afghanistan had taught him that that hysteria bubbling in his throat could be weaponized. You make people laugh where there is nothing to laugh about and people either gravitate towards you or leave you the fuck alone. Desirable results all around.

Lucky up north was a friend of the family who’d taught Wade taxidermy, yes, out of some ages-old debt to the man who’d made his life hell, but he’d also taught Wade how to kill mercifully.

“Not all God’s creatures deserve a painful death,” he’d said, “There’s not as many sins in the world as folks’ll have you believe.”

Lucky was gone now. Wade had gone north for his funeral. He hadn’t been back since. No one there for him now.

Peter was smart and Peter was kind and Peter didn’t have to learn mercy like Wade had had too. Wade reached out and placed a firm hand on the kid’s shoulder.

“Yes. It’s important,” he said. “There’re different kinds of education. Some are fucking shitty, the absolute worst. I mean, ‘I’d rather be dragged down a five lane highway,’ that kind of worse. But they’re all important, kiddo. Even the shitty ones.”

Peter wrapped his fingers, skinny, freezing fingers, around Wade’s wrist and dropped his eyes again. The kid was learning how to listen to what wasn’t being said. Wade didn’t know if he was learning it from him and Red or someone else or just on his own, but he was learning. It wasn’t an amazing feeling, but it was a kind of relief.

The sooner he learned the better.

“Wade, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’m going to be anyways, let me say it.”

Kid was growing up so fast. He’d be one of the good ones.

“Peter, go interview Red now. Make him tell you about the time he got so drunk at his fancy Ivy league school that he accidentally fucked his future boyfriend. Then ask him about the time he got crossfaded and set off the fire alarm in the law library at 2am on a Thursday.”

Peter stared wide-eyed in disbelief and promised to do so mutely.

 

 

He’d acquired a catnip garland and had trained (negotiated with) the cat so that she did not climb the motherfucking tree by the time Peter arrived for a second time. Wade had no sense of time, it was probably around winter break for him? He didn’t know, he’d been out of town for the last week and half. Dom had housesat for him so as to prevent Mr. Jefferies in the building directly opposite from getting too cocky in his absence.

Mr. Jefferies had instituted a war upon Christmas and liked to post huge bigoted signs in his window which Wade had taken on the responsibility of correcting. By means of silly string and shaving cream fired at his window. Nerf pellets were good too, as by the time the old man had wrenched open the window, the pellets had fallen and Wade’s own window stood innocently closed and empty.

Dom had pledged on Wade’s DVD of Die Hard that she would take on this power and responsibility with the utmost respect for the office and the people she’d be serving.

She’d also fed the cat. That was a plus.

Peter cuddled the cat and held out a double-spaced essay of their last conversation with a 91 written in red pen at the top of it.

Wade was offended.

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded. “91? We were doing solid 95 work the other day, Pete. The fuck did Red do to bring us down like this?”

He flipped the pages to find the transcripts at the end of the paper. He immediately saw the reason.

Red’s answers started out not unlike his, but Peter must have caught him in a mood, because about halfway through they started to focus almost entirely on the “the classist fucking nature of this goddamn assignment. No, write this exactly as I say it: higher education is a racist, classist, ableist institution which should be torn down in a mass revolution and rebuilt on something other than the exploitation of knowledge for financial gain.”

“So he went on one,” Peter explained. “And he didn’t want to talk about anything else once he’d gotten started. Mrs. Larson said that I should have used discretion and ended the interview.”

Now that was horseshit. The kid was being honest to the facts, that was just good methodology.

“Who was your fourth?” he asked, flipping through Red’s interview. It was lacking certain details about his laundry list of bad decisions, blonde, brunette and red-headed alike. He’d grill the kid on that later.

“I asked Mr. Wilson, like you said.”

“And he said?”

“He wants you to go talk to him.”

What?

Wait, no. That wasn’t right.

“Peter.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t realize he saw your name on the paper and he asked for my notebook to write down a quote.”

That motherfucking _counselor_. Duping a kid for personal gain. Wow.

He pressed fingers into his eyes.

“Cool, so I’m not doing that. I suppose he told you that college was a breeze and an essential part of growing up?”

“He said something about learning responsibility and agency over my own thoughts and body.”

“Of course, he did.”

“He said that he’s going to talk to Mr. Nelson about Matt, too, so I wouldn’t feel too bad.”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to go down well. Could be entertaining.

He huffed.

“Alright, whatever. Certainly better than a 91, though. That’s just elitism. She just doesn’t wanna admit that Red’s right ‘cause it contradicts your fancy school’s political agenda.”

Peter stared at him owlishly with Bella batting at his face for attention. He bobbed his head solemnly in agreement.

He was coming along just fine.

 

 

He escaped the counselor’s notice until two days before Christmas and it was entirely Red’s fault. Sam Wilson confronted them over an issue he needed to take up with Red over a mutual job and noticed his bloody, blue knuckles and then looked in his face and took in the lack of jacket and blue lips and asked him if Daredevil-ing was some kind of self-harm for him.

Red did not understand.

“No, this isn’t self-harm,” he’d explained with chattering teeth, “It’s been months since I—”

Wrong fucking thing to say, Red. Wrong fucking thing to say.

Sam Wilson buried a fist in his sweatshirt and told him that he couldn’t deal with this shit. He wasn’t on duty and it wasn’t his motherfucking job to chase after dumbass white boys on rooftops all day.

Red naturally tried to worm out of this grip and appealed to Wade on the basis of their comradery. Wade didn’t feel too bad for him, he’d already offered his coat twice. Red was the one who’d made that bed. Now he had to lie in it.

But then Red pulled off his mask and made the puppy eyes of betrayal and Wade groaned and told his fellow Wilson that it was fine, he’d take the guy home.

Wilson rounded on him like a predator. The kind from the movie, not like Bella.

“You’re a vet,” he said, flat as a dead man’s cardiogram.

Oh fuck, here we go.

“I’ve already got a therapist, big guy. Hand over the idiot and no one gets hurt.”

“What’s their name?”

Hadn’t he already played twenty questions this month?

“Don’t gotta tell you shit, doc-patient confidentiality and all that. C’mere Red, don’t break his arm.”

“You should come to the VA. We’ve got a Christmas group on.”

Yeah, no. Not a chance in hell. Wade wasn’t like those guys. He was beyond saving.

Red managed to twist out of Wilson’s grip and scampered over to Wade’s side, pressing in close. And good fucking God, fuck, his motherfucking fingers were so fucking—alright this was fine. Wade had been shot on multiple occasions by multiple bullets, he could deal with some ice hands.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” he said to Wilson, “Real kind of you, but see I already told my cat we were having dinner and it would be like, hella awkward to back out now. This is her first Christmas and she’s got all these expectations, you know?”

Sam Wilson was not moved. He stood his ground in the snow on the rooftop. Feet planted like proud tree trunks. It reminded Wade fucking awfully of dropping that first step off that porch with the swinging screen door in winter.

“You’re a vet,” Sam Wilson said. “You’re in my area. We can do things to help you.”

“Yeah, no. I’m Canadian, not—”

“Served in the US special forces that’s—”

“Hey, let’s not talk any more about this so I don’t have to stab myself and Red doesn’t catch hypothermia. Thanks, pal. That’s perfect.”

Red pressed in closer. He really did need to get inside, they’d have to call this one quits. Wade shook out his shoulders and shrugged off his coat to wrangle it onto his displeased companion. Once he was unhappily bundled and bitching about Wade’s coat smelling like him, Wade gave him a helpful shove in the direction of down, off the roof.

“Peter’s scared for you two,” Sam Wilson called after them.

Wade ignored him. He gave Red a little pull when he hesitated.

“Eyes front, soldier,” he said.

 

 

He couldn’t leave Red until his temperature was somewhere in the ballpark of not-hypothermic, so they sat on the floor of his cold-ass apartment while they waited for the heater to kick in. Red shuddered off into his room and re-emerged with a huge fleece blanket with the Columbia Lion printed on one side in baby blue and white. It was tied off around the edges, so made by someone who apparently couldn’t be assed to sew.

“Claire made it for me,” Red finally said. “Tried to throw it out, but she keeps checking my cupboard for it.”

Wade cocked an eyebrow. As far as he could see, it was the perfect blanket for someone as chronically lacking of heat as Red. It was a miracle he didn’t freeze to death at the first sight of frost. Wade held suspicions that the guy was a reanimated corpse sometimes.

“Dare I ask why you hate it?”

Red shuffled uncomfortably.

“So I’ve got this thing about mascots.”

Oh, _amazing._

“Go on.”

“Might have punched the lion.”

Fucking _perfect_.

“Don’t stop on my account, pal.”

 

 

“Do you think—”

“No.”

Sam Wilson was a bad influence on Red. They needed to be separated. Wade couldn’t have that Wilson getting too close to the guy. Might start planting seeds of doubt in Red’s head and Wade couldn’t afford that after all the work he’d done getting the guy to trust him. Red fidgeted with the fringe on the blanket. His fingers were more mottled red than blue. That was a good sign.

“I didn’t know you were a vet.”

Fuck. See? This is why he didn’t talk.

“I ain’t a vet.”

Red was quiet, still fumbling.

“Because you never came back?”

Wade reached between them to slap a hand on his forehead and then his cheek. Red flinched in surprise. He wasn’t as cold. He’d live.

“I’m going. Call Nelson to come sit with you.”

“Wait,” Red caught his calf, then let go hesitantly. He tucked his hand back into his blanket and looked down. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for, Red?” Wade asked, hopefully lightly. He must have read his heart. Inconvenient.

“Stay with me?”

He evaluated.

This was Red’s way of saying ‘I can tell you are suffering, but I don’t know how to fix it.’ He sighed and reached out to ruffle Red’s hair. He hated it and scowled, shoving Wade’s hand away.

Under all that rage, Red was a sweet kid too. It made Wade feel a little like the odd man out.

“Don’t worry about me, Matt. I’m fine,” he said. Red jerked at the use of his name and tried to find Wade’s face. His brow creased and he caught the hand Wade was in the process of pulling back.

“You’re lying.” His fingers were still cold in Wade’s palm.

“I’m always lying.”

“No, you’re always telling the truth. Just not the ones we want to hear.”

Okay, so maybe he’d have to kill him after all. He’d make it as painless as possible.

“I’m fine.”

“Why didn’t you come back from war?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“I told you about my mom,” Red blurted out. He tipped his chin down but didn’t let go of Wade’s hand. “I haven’t told more than four others. Please. Trust me.”

Old pain tastes like pockets of acid in your back teeth. Teeth in need of root canals. Pearly white hiding rot inside.

Red stayed on his floor. He kept himself low, head bent. A sign of deference. Whoever had beat him as a child had taught him that shit. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. Wade used to do it. From six to sixteen, he’d made himself small too.

Red made himself small so that Wade could feel in control. He wasn’t going to force the decision.

A sign of respect.

Wade sat back down and crossed his legs. The heater had finally started to work.

“When I was eighteen, I went to Afghanistan,” he began, for the first time since Ness. “I traded one shitty fucking life for another.”

 

 

He came home to the cat and dumped a cup of food into her bowl before peeling off his suit. He took the hottest shower he could manage out of the old pipes in his building. He dressed in the pajamas he’d worn the night Ness died and collapsed in bed.

The voices were whispering. He couldn’t be assed.

The cat came up and perched herself on his side. She tucked her little paws under her and accepted the pets he gave her with purring.

“Fuck it, honey. There’s always Alex,” he told her.

They binge-watched Jeopardy until he couldn’t hear the voices.

 

 

Wade and the cat were having an amazing Christmas Eve. It involved him watching Bella’s disappointment at his strategic replacement of all the glass shiny ornaments with plastic ones. She was upset that her warpath had ended and stared up at him pitifully, swinging a paw at one of the red ones at the bottom of the tree without connecting with it.

“Fucking sucks, huh?” he asked her.

There was a knock at the door. He left the cat to mourn her lost victory to open it.

And then slam it closed.

“Wade, c’mon man, talk to me,” Sam Wilson said on the other side.

Nope. Nice try, though. He and Spidey were going to have another chat about who was allowed to know where Wade’s apartment was and it was going to go like this. 1. No one. 2. Nobody. 3. _Niemand. Personne._

“Dude, this is the worst time of the year for people like us.”

Maybe for you. Maybe before. But Wade had a cat now and Nathan and Dom were coming over to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas with him in mere hours.

“I got company coming,” he shouted back through the door. “And I told you, I already got a therapist. You want someone to psychoanalyze, I guarantee you, Red is more interesting.”

There was silence on the other side of the door, but Wade wasn’t an idiot. The guy was still there. He flopped down on the couch and turned on the TV. Bella brought him part of the garland she’d detached via deep-bred predatory instincts.

He threw it. She went after it.

“Man, alright, whatever. I won’t psychoanalyze you. Let’s talk. Five minutes.”

He fucking hated superheros. Always getting up in people’s business. There was a reason he kept out of that shit.

Bella sniffed at the door.

Ugh.

Fine.

He cracked it open.

“Five minutes. Anymore and I’m throwing your ass down the stairs.”

 

 

Bella laid all over Sam Wilson like a traitor. Wade didn’t offer him a drink.

“Okay, right to the chase. Why don’t you tell anyone?” Wilson asked, stroking the cat. Wade snorted.

“What, and get written off as another ex-military basket case? No thanks. I’ve moved on from that shit. I’ve built me a new reputation off of six different types of crazy. If jaded vet is what clients are looking for, their guy is Frank Castle, not me,” He paused and gave Wilson a once-over. “For the record, I get that Pete trusts you and whatever and I get that Stark hates us, but that ain’t no reason for you to get involved with me and Red’s lives. You can take your Cap-in-training shit straight to the bank if that’s what you’re here for.”

Sam Wilson was an even-keeled guy and, to his credit, he didn’t take offense to Wade’s words. He carried on petting Bella who stretched her limbs wide to increase access to her belly. It was a trap, but Wilson didn’t fall for it.

“Your buddy Red is Buck’s lawyer’s boo,” he said. “I only keep an eye on him for my own benefit, if I’m honest. Guy’s not as tough as you, Wade. He’s got space for self-doubt.”

“I know,” Wade shot back. “And that’s the fucking problem. You keep feeding him shit like that and that makes him half as useful.”

Wilson blinked in surprise.

“You don’t mean that. They’re more to you than weapons.”

“Mm, debatable.”

Wilson stopped petting the cat and she made a concerned meow.

“Peter calls you two his mentors. Some kind of big brothers. He says that you two are the ones who kept him alive after that shit a few months ago. Kid’s allegiance might be stronger to you and Red than it is to the Avengers.”

He wasn’t taking that bait.

“They’re pains in my ass. The same at the bottom line, the two of them. Won’t kill. All puppy eyes and mercy. They’re useful for certain jobs and it benefits me to make them trust me.”

Sam Wilson cocked his head slowly.

“You’re not half as stupid as people say you are, are you?”

Wade gave him a shark’s smile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Falcon. I just let people think what they want. You got two minutes, so ask what you need to.”

Wilson pursed his lips and carefully moved Bella onto the floor. He stood up and brushed off the cat fur.

“Are you lonely, Wade?” he asked. He gestured at the apartment. “You said your girl’s—”

“Dead. No. Not lonely. Next question.”

Wilson took this in his stride.

“Not lonely. Right. Just you and your cat and these people who you use because they’re convenient.”

“That’s correct.”

He scoffed.

“Alright, sure. If that’s what gets you through the day. But I think we might be able to help you, Wade. If you come down to the VA, we have group therapy or one-on-one if that’s better for you. You’re ex-special forces, man. No one comes out of that unscathed. There’s no shame in it.”

Wade chuckled and leaned his hip against the counter.

“Sam—can I call you Sam? I don’t care, I’m calling you Sam—you’re a good guy, but I need you to understand: I’m not interested in being saved or helped or any of that shit. Especially not by the fucking Avengers. I’m made my peace with my shitstain of a life and I’ve made my peace with the people who come in and out of it. Red and Spidey, they’ll fuck off eventually. They’re probably salvageable, you’re right about that. If that’s what you’re worried about, cool. Focus on them. But do me a favor and steer clear of me. I’d hate to have to kill you in front of those kids.”

Sam stood his ground. Looked Wade in the eye.

“I hear you,” he said, “But I’m not sure I believe you. And that’s fine, man. That’s cool. It’s fucking hard to admit that you love those dumb fuckers when you know with certainty that they’ll die before you. But just so you know, the offer stands. If things get bad, you’re welcome to join us at the VA. No judgment.”

“Great. Thanks. Get out.”

 

 

Red snuck in the window at 2 am and yanked off Wade’s covers to piss him off. The night air that followed him through the open window was heinous.

“Merry Christmas,” he announced. Fresh as a daisy, despite having just endured midnight mass.

“Come here, so I can murder you,” Wade grumbled into the pillow. Then remembered Dom and Nathan passed out in the living room. He grabbed Red before he could go out there and hunt down the cat and made such a fuss that Red squirmed out of his grip and told him to fuck off. He then appeared to remember the object of this mission and grabbed a box from the window sill. He dropped it in Wade’s lap and made him promise not to open it until morning.

Wade cooed at him and laid a fat, wet kiss on his cheek which got him good and disgusted and then he was back out the window, heading back from whence he came.

It was a jacket.

Black with a fleece sweater lining, a soft hood, and pockets inside and out. It wasn’t a Deadpool jacket. It was a Wade jacket.

Wade found himself hoping the guy had gotten one for himself. Then kicked himself and damned Sam Wilson to hell.

 

 

Spidey showed up after Dom and Nathan had cleared out and excitedly dropped a bag in his hands. It was heavy. Wade gave it back and said that he hadn’t gotten anything for the kid.

The kid insisted that he take it and that he didn’t want anything in return.

It was a jar. A bowl rather, filled the brim with a fuckload of beads. The kind the kid was always chiding him for losing.

“If you put it in your window, you won’t lose them,” he told Wade. “And they last for a really long time, so you don’t have to worry about them breaking or anything.”

He didn’t know what to say because Peter could read between the lines now that he was a little older and he knew that things that lasted a long time were important to Wade.

“Buddy, you didn’t have to do that.”

“Mr. Wilson says that you’re gonna be alive longer than all of us put together,” Peter cut him off, “And maybe I’ll be gone before you are, but me and Matt will make sure you’ve got plenty of stuff to remember us by, the same way you remember Vanessa.”

Jesus.

 _Jesus_.

“Come here, Peter,” he said, swallowing hard.

The kid was still small in his arms, against his chest. He wouldn’t be that way for long. He’d get big. Get stronger. And Wade would be able to watch him do it. He smoothed the kid’s hair and rubbed his back. Swallowed hard.

“I’m not gonna forget either of you,” he told the side of his head, “Couldn’t do it if I tried, baby boy. Don’t need no fancy rocks to make sure of that.”

“Well it can’t hurt,” the kid said into his shoulder. He pulled back grinning.

He had to go. Wade let him go.

His heart hurt. Hadn’t hurt like that since he’d picked out the dress Ness would be buried in. He decided that he hated Team Red and damned it to hell. They never should have made anything of it.

He never should have made anything of it.

But then there was Red with his shitty sense of humor and his shy deference. And then there was Pete and his mercy and teenage grumpiness and god, the thought of it going away hurt even worse.

He’d shepherd them, he decided. If he couldn’t make himself destroy their team, then he could at least carry it. Hold it together. He could do that much. He had ages to go. He could invest that kind of time. That kind of effort. He could make himself let them in a little closer.

Right?

Right.

There were no more swinging screen doors. Ness wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t have to stay still forever.

Even if the rocks would last that long.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, y'all.


End file.
